


What's in a Name?

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Insert, Oneshot, canon compatible, s2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 08:19:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5283551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma Simmons is not an angry person. (Set S2)</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's in a Name?

Jemma Simmons is not an angry person. She doesn’t get fired up over much and she’s never seen the point in holding a grudge. But it gets easier to see the point - in fact, it gets harder to see it as a grudge, and more like a mission, like a vow - when every day, she watches Fitz struggle and shake and suffer, and look at her like he wants to apologise for it, but he doesn’t know how.

Jemma Simmons is not an angry person. She watches Ward every morning, exercising, and wonders not how much damage she could do before he beat her, but how he keeps such accurate time. Sometimes, though, she has dreams that disturb her. Dreams where she creates poison. Dreams where she leaves his blood in her wake.

Jemma Simmons is not an angry person. She kisses Fitz on the cheek and smiles at the Team and she takes the steel in their eyes because she knows she deserves it. But as she steps onto the plane, she draws the strength not to cry from May’s silence in the cockpit, and it twists in her gut that she has been forced to lie, that she has been forced to leave, that FitzSimmons has been broken while they are both still breathing.

Jemma Simmons is not an angry person, though she has a lot to be angry about. So it surprises her when one little word starts to prick at her.

“Miss Simmons,” they call her, and it stings, like sparks across her face.

She smiles and pushes down the growing, twisting, writhing feeling. She doesn’t understand it, but she knows, that if it gets set alight, the consequences could be catastrophic.

“Miss Simmons,” they call her, and she looks at the glaring black decal on the wall, and tries to tell herself, _thi_ _s is the least of my problems._

“Miss Simmons,” he calls her.

“It’s- it’s Doctor, actually,” she corrects him. “Doctor Simmons.”

When he turns, her heart nearly stops. She should have known she’d screw this up, and they didn’t like her to speak at the best of times. She nearly swallows her tongue as he leans over her, just breaching the fringes of a bubble of personal space that had not existed before him.

“Actually, it’s not,” he points out smoothly. He’s looking down his nose at her. “You were erased. Or did you forget?”

He enjoys the horror in her eyes. They widen slightly, and her lips part, and maybe once, she would have protested, but she doesn’t.

His eyes move from her face to Turgeon’s, where he stands, dumbfounded, at his bench. The two of them nod at each other, and Turgeon flashes a nervous smile, and then Bakshi looks back to Simmons.

“If I were you, I’d take care to remember my place,  _Miss Simmons_.”

He smiles, and walks away.

“What was that about?” Turgeon asks quietly. She turns her eyes to him instead, with gratefulness and hatred and the urge to vomit rearing up all at once. Her eyes sting. Her throat clamps up.

“Nothing,” she mutters. She flashes him a smile and goes back to work, burying her face behind a microscope and hoping that as he hovers at her shoulder, he cannot see her free hand clench into a fist.


End file.
